


Thimblerig

by damalur



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-12
Updated: 2010-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:25:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor attempts life as a househusband, grows a TARDIS, eats makeup, admits to liking cats, waxes about Lovecraft, and neglects to tell Rose something fairly important. A post-Journey's End fix-it story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I owe an enormous thank you to [](http://cytherea999.livejournal.com/profile)[**cytherea999**](http://cytherea999.livejournal.com/), who graciously agreed to beta read for a complete newbie to the fandom. The red TARDIS was inspired by a panel in _Buffy: Season Eight_. Magrathea, Oglaroon, and many of my other throwaway references were lifted directly from that wholly remarkable book, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_.

Rose starts to suspect that her Doctor isn't at all human around the time she first notices his hearts. It's not as if she goes around listening surreptitiously to his insides, either; no, they're lying in bed, recovering from a vigorous round of what the Doctor informs her is known as "Belgiuming" in some of the more backwards colonies of the 26th century.

"Did you say...'Belgiuming?' What, really?"

"Sorry," the Doctor says, "was my arm over your ear?" He rolls over, pulling her on top of him.

Rose settles against the long lines of his body and lets her head drop against his bare chest. The thrum of his heart is steady beneath her ear, the pulse still elevated; she can almost make out the rush of blood through his veins, pumped by that steady quadruple throb—

No. Hang on.

"Doctor," she says, and lifts her head. His eyes fix on her and widen and he smiles brilliantly; she starts to ask what new idea has occurred to him, but then realizes he's simply looking at _her_.

"Yes?"

"Nothing," Rose says, and smiles back at him. "Nothing, really." She curls against him again, nestles her head into the crook of his shoulder. It's a lovely crook, it really is, and Time Lord women must enjoy curling against their men as much as human women do, because Rose can think of no other reason why a man of any species would possess such a perfect juncture between shoulder and neck.

"The TARDIS should be ready for curtains sometime around Christmas." He strokes a hand idly down her back, tracing the contours of her shoulder blades and spine. "I'm thinking perhaps maroon drapes. I've always been partial to maroon, and there's this brilliant planet in the Beehive cluster that weaves the most incredible velvets—well, it isn't really velvet, but it's similar. We ought to visit someday, Rose, I think you'd enjoy it—"

Rose shuts her eyes. She's been waiting for years to get him into bed, after all; she's not stupid enough to interrupt the afterglow _now_.

::

He's also retained the annoying habit of referring to "you humans," as if her entire species is some sort of exotic fauna. "You humans make the best pastries," he tells her, or, "I find it amazing that you humans invented the airplane _before_ the zeppelin."

"But we didn't," she tries to tell him, "or at least in our universe we didn't," and he gives her a distracted, puzzled look that means he isn't certain of her point but doesn't want to admit to it.

In his endless quest for assimilation, he keeps trying what he calls "human occupations" and what the rest of the planet terms either "hobbies" or "jobs." He makes no distinction between the two, which means that he puts as much dedication into assembling a model train set as he does into starting his own newspaper or selling software packages. Rose sighs and cleans out her spare bedroom and very nearly succeeds in not looking amused. She is thankful that none of his "occupations" last more than a week or two; the printing press took up an absurd amount of room, even in the spacious flat Pete rents for her.

This week the Doctor's attempting househusbandry, which consists primarily of concocting fantastic and explosive dinners and puttering about in his bathrobe on certain days. The rest of the time he spends as usual— an even split between trailing Rose around Torchwood and nurturing the baby TARDIS taking root in their bathroom.

"Rose," he says one day, as he drops into the chair across from her and props his shoes against her desk. "Do you think that we should buy a pet?"

Rose lifts one of his feet enough to free her report. "A pet? Why would we need a pet?"

He frowns. "Well...it's the thing to do, isn't it? You humans always have pets underfoot, and lawns, and mortgages, and children—"

"Right. If you have that much leisure time, there's a vacancy in the R&amp;D department."

He bolts upright. "No, that's quite—that's not _really_ necessary, don't you think? I'm busy as it is, you know, groceries to buy, carpets to vacuum, washing to...wash..."

"Oh?" Rose pretends to study the minuscule print at the bottom of Form HC-2 "Alien and Alien Artifact Removal, Guidance for." Does she really need triplicate signatures to take the Doctor off Torchwood premises? Likely so, she decides, at least with superiors like hers. "You're going shopping, then?"

"I thought we might need some bananas and potatoes and...things," the Doctor says, and tugs at his ear. "Since I'm the one in charge of our domestic concerns. Did you know that you humans conducted a study and concluded that male homemakers have a higher risk for heart disease? How absurd is that?"

Heart disease, Rose thinks, and nearly mentions that they won't have to hurry if one of his hearts gives out, since he has a backup. Instead, she pushes back her chair and circles around her desk to return Form HC-2 to the filing cabinet. "They have a new spaceship down in the basement," she says, mildly. "Jillian Everett's there with her team taking it apart."

"Have they," the Doctor says, and drifts closer.

"Mmm." Rose leans back against her cabinet; something living rattles in the bottom drawer, and she makes a mental note to pick up an extra padlock from the supplies closet. They'd probably make her fill out a form for that, too. "I could go another day without bananas, although I wonder how you'd manage."

He grins delightedly at her, and Rose reaches out to hook a hand under his lapel. "I suppose, since I am immensely clever," he says, "that I could show your people how to strip down a spaceship. Anyone can buy groceries, after all; it's hardly the best use for a mind that holds the collective wisdom of two universes."

Her laughter is soft. "Quite right, too." He tries to frown, fails miserably, and is just about to brush his lips over her own, when Thibault from across the hall pops his head in. "New forms for you, Director Tyler," he says, and waves an inch-thick stack of paper in her direction. Rose groans; the Doctor drops a kiss to her forehead and escapes out the door.

::

He also needs remarkably little sleep for a human-hybrid. Even a half-human should need more than a few hours' rest in a week, Rose decides, but she almost never catches him sleeping. She's far more likely to be awakened in the middle of the night by the glow of her laptop or the clink of tools as he tinkers beside the bed. Once she'd woken in the morning and shuffled into the kitchen, only to find seventeen empty jam jars scattered across her countertop, a large chart drawn in charcoal on the wall, and a note stapled to the dishcloth that read, _Ran to the market to restock on jam, please make sure DVR is set to record Gilligan's Island_, followed by a paragraph on the Skipper's hat and another on indicators of entropy in spherical universes.

The problem is that the Doctor hardly ever leaves the bedroom when she's asleep, except for the time with the jam and the handful of instances she's gone to the toilet at night and found him crouched in the bathtub, ankle-deep in water and murmuring to the TARDIS. And when he's awake and she's present—conscious or otherwise—he seems to have a difficult time _not_ talking to her. He startles her at three in the morning by telling her that her internet connection is dismally archaic, or that there used to exist a planet called Magrathea that manufactured other planets, or that Pete's World has no lava lamps and isn't that fascinating.

She thinks about asking him to leave at night, but she doesn't have the heart; and at any rate, she's as desperate for his company as he is for hers. So for months when he wakes her up she just burrows back under her covers, or tells him that a faster internet connection has yet to be invented and he'd better get on that, or reminds him to dry his feet before coming back to bed. She starts nodding off at office meetings, and during dinner, and once in the middle of sex; finally, even the Doctor notices.

They're at the supermarket when he does, stocking up on more than just bananas and jam because too much sugar isn't good for anyone, even if anyone isn't entirely human. Rose gives a jaw-cracking yawn in the middle of the dairy isle and nearly drops the eggs.

"Rose," the Doctor says, "are you alright?"

"Oh, I'm," she manages, before breaking into another yawn. "Just tired, is all."

"Tired?" His eyes narrow behind his glasses, and he sets two seemingly identical cartons of soy milk back in the case. "Have you not been getting enough rest? Is something keeping you up? Illness? Problems at work? Your mother?"

"Well," Rose says, guiltily.

"You're not pregnant, are you?" He leans over and then licks, actually _licks_, the side of her face. "Mmm...no, you don't taste pregnant."

"Stop that. You can't lick me in public—and no, I'm not pregnant! What is wrong with you lately?"

"With me? Rose, we're discussing your personal failings, not mine," he retorts, primly.

Rose sighs. "Sleeping—or rather, _not_—isn't a personal failing, you know."

"No, I suppose that's true. Well—it does get tiresome, waiting around for you."

"If you want to know," Rose says, and sets the eggs in the basket, "I'd sleep better if a certain Time Lord didn't keep talking to me in the middle of the night. That would be you," she adds, just to be certain he understands. It's difficult to tell sometimes when he really is daft, and when he's pretending to be daft, and when he's pretending to be daft to cover up actual daftness.

"_I'm_ keeping you up?" His forehead smooths out, and he conjures an expression that hovers between concern and offense. Concern wins out. "Would you like me to go...?"

"No! No. Maybe you could just...be a bit quieter? And," Rose adds, "if you think of something really important to tell me, write it down for the morning."

He rocks back on his heels. "I can do that. I didn't mean to keep waking you up. I—"

"It's alright," Rose tells him. "I understand." And she does, she really does; it's difficult to believe that they're living this life together, but—beach-side declarations aside—she's not going to force him into unnecessary revelations. "Now, what was it you were saying about soy milk?"

The change in his mood is instant, sorrowful to luminous in three seconds flat; he grabs her hand and bounds back to the dairy case, and Rose doesn't have to pretend to be interested in the difference between flocculation and creaming in emulsion instability.

::

In Rose's experience, humans are also less attached to a single suit of clothing. Granted, Tony screams if her mother strips him out of his rocket ship shirt long enough to wash, but the Doctor is unnaturally opposed to wardrobe variety for someone who isn't a recalcitrant five-year-old. After he builds a perpetual motion machine out of the contents of her dustbin, she tucks her debit card in his pocket and sends him off to the shops. Three hours later, he returns with a suit identical to his other in every way save the color, six pairs of plimsolls—one in a truly magnificent embroidered green—and a coat that costs half of her yearly earnings and is identical to his other in every way.

She expresses appropriate awe over the coat's flair, agrees that it won't be difficult to make the trouser pockets dimensionally transcendent, and examines each pair of shoes individually. If the Doctor wants to wear the same suit everyday, then the Doctor will wear the same suit everyday, and she has no desire to stop him.

Jackie Tyler, however, holds a different opinion.

"Do you never wear anything but that old jacket?" her mum asks, at the monthly family dinner. "You look like something dragged in off the streets, and Pete being respectable, too! Rose, why haven't you taken him shopping?"

Rose takes a bite of stroganoff to hide her grin; the Doctor scowls down at his paisley tie. "Suits are respectable, Jackie Tyler," he declares. "And Rose tells me the brown compliments my eyes and the pinstripes are—" He cuts off at a glare from Rose herself.

"They aren't respectable when it looks like you've not worn anything else in your life," her mum retorts. "We could take an iron to you and you'd hardly look improved. And have you once, in eight thousand years, bothered to pick up a comb?"

The Doctor's mouth works soundlessly. Rose awards her mother a mental tally and considers ducking under the table to avoid the oncoming conniption.

"I," the Doctor says, with great dignity, "am not _eight thousand_. I'm barely nine hundred! If there's anyone here who looks nine hundred, it certainly isn't—"

"Doctor," Rose says.

He thumps his spoon back down on the table, and red droplets of soup go flying. "Rose, she insulted my hair. My_ hair_."

"And she was wrong to insult your hair. Your hair is magnificent. Mum thinks so, too, doesn't she?"

"No," her mum says. "And I'll be taking both of you shopping. Tomorrow."

The Doctor makes a strangled sound. Rose chokes on her stroganoff. "What? Why do_ I_ need to go?"

"You wear that same awful blue jacket every day, and don't take that tone with me. You're in as much need of a new look as him, and that says something."

Rose is certain there's no clearer recipe for disaster than a shopping trip with the Doctor and her mother; that said, she's equally certain that nothing will be gained by arguing. Her mum's probably feeling overlooked, particularly considering how preoccupied Rose has been with her new houseguest.

Her houseguest, however, is not so aware of the thin ice on which he treads. "Shopping? _Shopping?_ You can't possibly want to take me _shopping._ The idea is ludicrous, absurd, completely without merit, and I refuse to be directed in such a..." Rose pushes her stroganoff into her rice pilaf and pointedly does not look at the Doctor; he catches the motion and sighs. "Oh, all right, we're going, aren't we?"

Rose nods. Pete surprises them all by asking for the butter.

They do go shopping the next day, but going on the Doctor's wardrobe no one would ever have known.

::

He doesn't get sick.

Even when he has every reason to be sick, he isn't. One damp Thursday they decide to stay indoors and bake, and they end up eating most of the pastry dough raw, and Rose is violently ill in the sink, but the Doctor has not so much as a twinge in his stomach. He solicitously holds her hair back for her, and then helps her into her warmest pajamas and tucks her into bed. He doesn't even have the decency to look queasy, although Rose knows he ate three times the batter she did.

Except one day he does get sick, and it isn't from too many sweets or because the flu's been going around the office. No, it's because he decides it's a good idea to eat her makeup.

He's sitting on the edge of the bathtub, watching her sort through eyeliners. For once he's in his shirtsleeves, cradling what looks like a radio, except it's built of crystal and trails long, multi-colored wires in all directions.

Having finished twisting the wires into a complicated braid, he sets the radio behind him—it seems to suffer no adverse effects from being submerged in the TARDIS's bubble bath—and props his chin on one fist. "I have never understood," he declares, "the propensity of women for covering their faces with artificial goops. It's nearly universal, you know. Even in species with three or four biological genders, there is always at least one sex that insists on spending an inordinate amount of time on cosmetics."

"Ah," Rose says, knowingly. "Bothers you, doesn't it?" She sets her foundation down next to her exfoliant.

"There are few behaviors that so elude me. I'm familiar with the concept, you know, cover up blemishes, look younger so you can attract a male of the species...but how is it _so_ universal?" He resettles his chin on an open palm. "On the planet Oglaroon, the entire population of which lives in a single nut tree—well, I say nut tree, I mean Oglanut tree, the nuts aren't _really_ nuts—Oglaroonian women can't even bear children until they're halfway through their life cycle. Subsequently, the older females are considered the very height of attractiveness, ripe with the wisdom of the ages, and yet most of them spend their free time grinding up Oglanut tree bark and applying it to their ears to make themselves look younger. How, I ask you, is that evolutionarily beneficial?"

"You're telling me they lives their entire lives in one tree?" Rose meets his eyes in the mirror and grins. "You're having me on, aren't you?"

"It's perfectly true! Oglaroon. One tree. I'll take you there someday."

"And Barcelona, too." She sweeps a handful of tubes off the counter and into a tin. "Hold this, will you?"

He takes the tin from her with both hands, tilting it this way and that to examine the contents. "Is there a reason for me to do so, or have I been reduced to a simple accessory in your random whims?"

"I've finished with those. Thought Mum might want to pick over them before I throw everything out."

The Doctor frowns. "Doesn't she have her own?"

"Yeah, but it's...it's a mother-daughter thing, right? Sharing makeup? Like—I know this blue eyeshadow is rubbish on me, but it might look good on Mum."

He opens his mouth, thinks better of it, and sets the tin on his lap to extract his glasses from his shirt pocket. Personal growth, him not making a crack about her mother, Rose decides; she turns back to the vanity to search for her curling iron.

When she glances his way again, he's opened one of her compacts and is delicately pressing the tip of his tongue to the powder. He pulls back, smacking thoughtfully. "Interesting. Carmine, ammonium hydroxide, and is that...I think it is! Rosewater."

"You," she says, affectionately, "are a Oglanut."

"Oglanuts aren't nuts, and I am neither a nut nor something that closely resembles a nut." He snaps the compact shut and swaps it for a small jar. "'Chemical exfoliant'," he reads, "'for a spa day at home.'" A sharp twist of his wrist unscrews the lid, and in go his fingers. "Mmf," he says, around half his hand. "That's a bit more complex. Some interesting enzymes, and...what's this?"

Rose shakes her head. "We could make a fortune off you if only we could find the right—" Violent coughing,_ his_ violent coughing, cuts her off. She whirls around to find him clutching at his throat, his skin flushed a peculiar scarlet.

She slams her knee against the bathtub, but still catches him before he slips to the floor. "Doctor! What—"

His eyes look like they're going to bulge right out of his head. "Salicylic acid," he chokes. "Electrolytes. I need electrolytes to—" He spasms against her, and this time Rose can't prevent his downward slide.

"Oh God. Right, electrolytes. Electrolytes. Electrolytes are in sport drinks, and...oh. _Oh!_ Wait right here, Doctor, I'll be back!" She leaps over him and tears into the kitchen. Refrigerator, in the door, and there! She loads as many of the bottles into her arms as she can carry and rushes back. The first bottle she has to hold to his lips, but after that he sits up on his own and downs three more in quick succession.

"Thank Pete," he says, between sips of bottle number five, "for Vitex. Miraculous stuff."

"What_ was_ that?"

"Salicylic acid. It's an ingredient in aspirin, must have been some in your exfoliant. The electrolytes help my system flush it out, though I'll be wobbly for the rest of the day."

"You _stupid_ man." She lunges forward and wraps him in a fierce hug. "Don't you ever eat my makeup again."

Long fingers thread through her hair, tugging her closer. "That," he says, "is a promise."

::

It's a perfect life, paperwork and sleep and salicylic acid aside. It's a perfect life, and at times she can't believe it's hers.

It's a perfect life, until the day she comes home from work to find a red police box standing in her living room, and can't ignore what's staring her in the face any longer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor attempts life as a househusband, grows a TARDIS, eats makeup, admits to liking cats, waxes about Lovecraft, and neglects to tell Rose something fairly important. A post-Journey's End fix-it story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe an enormous thank you to [](http://cytherea999.livejournal.com/profile)[**cytherea999**](http://cytherea999.livejournal.com/), who graciously agreed to beta read for a complete newbie to the fandom. The red TARDIS was inspired by a panel in _Buffy: Season Eight_. Magrathea, Oglaroon, and many of my other throwaway references were lifted directly from that wholly remarkable book, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_. [Reposted from April 2009.]

They spend the first snowfall of the year huddled down at the local, a row of empty glasses and a heaping basket of chips between them. It's late enough that even most of the regulars have gone home; the bartender is deep in discussion with a woman possibly older than the Doctor. The Doctor himself is coaxing the pub's sleek tabby to their table with a row of chips. "Cats like the salt," he explains. He offers the cat another chip; it leaps onto the table and knocks over the saltshaker.

"Do you think they'll mind it being up here?"

"Hm? Mind what?" Those lovely hands of his sweep over the cat and down its back. "And 'it' is a she."

Rose hides her grin behind the rim of her pint. "Thought you didn't like cats, anyway."

The cat settles herself to the tabletop, tucks her paws beneath her, and starts to purr; the Doctor looks up from his attentions bemusedly. "Don't like cats? Whatever gave you that impression?"

"Oh, you know," she says, and takes a sip in lieu of laughing. "That time in 2012, with the Isolus."

"With the—oh." He tousles his hair. "Well, we'd just had that business with the cat nuns, and it's more that I was_ temporarily_ put off cats because I'd nearly been infested with the plague, and it takes some time to recover from that sort of thing, you know, but obviously I don't _dislike_ cats."

"That's funny." She pauses. "Because it seemed to me you were jealous that I paid attention to the cat instead of you."

"Jealous?" He has his_ affronted lord of the universe _face on, his _how dare you imply that I am susceptible to such a lowly emotion_ face. "Jealous? I'll have you know, Rose Tyler, that I was no such thing. _Jealous_. Really. The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about—"

"It was rather adorable," Rose interrupts.

"I might have been a bit jealous," he corrects. "A tiny bit. Not _much_."

"Of course not."

"'The cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see,'" he tells her, peering through his eyelashes and obviously trying to not be obvious about changing the subject.

"Who's that, then?"

"H.P. Lovecraft. They don't have him here. No Cthulhu, no Elder Gods, no Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young," he rattles off, plainly relishing the weight of the title in his mouth. "This is a universe curiously devoid of myth."

"Do you mean that?"

"No, not really." He slumps and addresses the cat. "We could call you 'Menes,' although I'm not _positive_ that's fitting for a lady such as yourself. How about Bastet?" He studies the cat intently; she yawns in response, and he beams. "Bastet it is!"

Rose shovels a handful of chips into her mouth. There is nothing, she decides, more perfect than perfect chips. These are just right, thick and hot, a tad lighter on the inside; if there is a heaven, it surely involves the Doctor and chips. Bastet, too, she thinks magnanimously.

The barkeep lets out a sharp salvo of laughter, and Rose studies him as she chews. He has what look like walnut shells out on the counter; the old lady tilts her head, and then points, birdlike. The barkeep shakes his head and laughs again.

"Ah. The army game," the Doctor breaks in, easily interpreting her curious stare.

"The army game?"

"Or the shell game. I've heard it called thimblerig. It's a confidence trick, centuries old—since the Middle Ages, at least."

"Seen it on the telly, but I didn't know the name," Rose admits. "Aren't they supposed to be betting?"

"Nah. He's just playing to show off his skill, now. It's impossible to win against a good shell man."

"Why's that?"

"Sleight of hand. The really skilled ones can nab a pea from underneath a shell without the mark ever noticing. When they play it on the street, there's usually a couple of shills in the crowd to lookout for the police," he adds, really warming to the topic. "If you have a good partner, they can help you con a mark into playing. The shill starts a game, and either picks the obviously wrong shell or is allowed to win, at which point the mark jumps in, eager to show the shill up. The mark can't win, of course; I've seen a shell man swap the pea from one shell to another without moving his hands. There are tells, but human eyes can't keep up to spot them. Sometimes you get a human trying the shell game off-world, and some other species with telepathy or faster reflexes catches on—"

"Alright," Rose says, "so were you the mark or the shell man?"

"I was the—I don't know what you're talking about, Rose Tyler."

"Just saying, you seem to know an awful lot about a con game—"

"I know an awful lot about an awful lot of things."

"You were the mark, weren't you?" she crows.

He scowls; the cat yawns again and resumes her rumble. "Look," he says. "You upset Bastet. Poor girl, did Rose bother you with her lying ways?"

Rose fights a fit of laughter and loses.

::

She's nearly packed up and out of the office for the holidays when Jill Everett drops her bombshell. One last, blessed form to file, one final audio recording to hand off to the languages team, and she's free. Jillian pops by just as she's adding a flourish to the end of the penultimate signature.

"Rose Tyler," Jill chides, "I know that look. You're about to swan off early, aren't you?"

Rose glances up, guiltily. "Well, maybe. How d'you know?"

Jill's smile reminds her of Ida Scott, just a bit; it could be the hair. "Your blinds are drawn, your computer's off, and you're wearing your coat even though it's warm enough to boil water in here." Her grin turns mischievous. "And if I had a man waiting for me like your Doctor, I'd be swanning off early, too."

Rose feels herself flush. "I'm entitled to look forward to Christmas, same as anyone."

"That you are," Jill says, "and we're glad to see it. Anyway, I just came up here to tell you thanks for helping with that android the other day. I didn't fancy losing my free will to a paranoid, manic-depressive robot."

"Robots are old hat, by now." She tucks her tongue between her teeth and shoots Jillian a sly look. "Give me an alien any day of the week."

The other's woman's laugh is low and contained; she always laughs like that, as if she doesn't want anyone else to overhear. "I'll leave both to you. Speaking of aliens, though, you remember that ship we tore apart last spring?"

"Which? The Altairian?"

"No, that black one—nearly frictionless surface; we never could figure out where it came from, even with the Doctor's help. We scavenged some parts from it, though, that's what the new bioscanner security system's based on. The thing is, Rose—"

"Yeah?" Rose says, slowly. Jill's deadly serious now, dropping quick glances over her shoulder and clenching the doorframe with both hands.

"Your Doctor—he isn't human, is he? His heart rates, his life signs...everything screams Martian." She hesitates. "Look, it's not the sort of thing I mind—he's a good bloke, and I'm not here to pry. I didn't know where you'd be if anyone else noticed, though."

A cold tendril unfurls inside Rose's chest. "Not human. Not at all human? Can you detect hybrids?"

Jillian looks surprised. "Hybrids are easy, because of the human side. Incredible technology—but you mean you didn't know?"

Rose forces herself to smile. "No, I...knew. Thanks, Jill."

"No problem." A beat. "Are you okay? I thought—"

"I'm fine. Just anxious to get home."

"Alright, then. Happy Christmas, Rose."

"Happy Christmas," Rose returns automatically, and doesn't notice when the other woman pulls the door shut behind her. It's difficult to think at all, past the roar of confusion and shock and other things best left unnamed. Someone else wearing her body finishes the paperwork, someone else takes the lift down to the parking garage, someone else opens her car door and starts the engine. She sees from a great distance that her hands are trembling, and clutches at the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip to compensate.

The drive home is a blur, the hike up to their third-floor flat equally so. She fumbles the keys and almost drops them; it takes long, precious moments to work the deadbolt and turn the doorknob, and when the door swings open her vision is entirely consumed by something red.

"Rose!" The Doctor ambushes her from behind the sofa. "Merry Christmas! Isn't this fantastic? I was going to tell you, but then I thought I'd keep it for a surprise. The kitchen isn't quite finished, of course, unless we want a dishwasher that belches soap bubbles, and it doesn't have much by way of furnishings—I thought you'd want to help with that, or we could just take everything from here, whichever you'd like—but the best part," he pats at his pockets and finally withdraws a key, "is that she's finally ready for a test run! Where should it be? Damogran? Oglaroon? Eleventh-century Indonesia?"

He's practically vibrating in place, his hair even more disordered than usual, his glasses perched crookedly on his face, one hand pressed against the red TARDIS simply to feel her beneath his fingertips; and in that moment he's very dear to her.

"Rose? Rose, is something the matter?"

He's very dear to her, but it isn't enough.

"Doctor," she says, "why do you have two hearts?"

His face falters. "I'm part Time Lord—"

"No, I'm certain you said that you—this you—only had one heart." He looks away, and that's answer enough for her. "Why did you lie to me about being human? Did you think I needed—"

"It seemed like the best solution for everyone," he says, quietly. "We'd hoped that—well, between Donna and the...other me, they had one whole human and one whole Time Lord, and there had to be a way to make Donna right again without doing something silly like erasing her memories—"

She slides to the floor. The world starts to spin, and her respiratory reflex kicks in, and she gasps for air, because all she can do is _breathe_.

"Rose! Rose, are you—"

"Oh my God," she says. "You switched places. The half-human one—he went back to the other universe with Donna—you switched—"

"Yes," he says. "Just after we dropped Jack and Martha and Mickey off."

"You switched places," she says again.

"Yeah." His voice drops to a low, almost gravelly register. "Nipped off when you and Jackie were caught up with Donna, changed suits, I got the piece from the TARDIS, and—well. That was it."

When she looks up he's kneeling in front of her, his eyes large and liquid. "Why didn't you tell me? You just—dump me back on that beach, with some duplicate of you—"

"He is me, Rose. I wasn't lying about that."

"No. No, but you aren't him, are you?"

He doesn't answer.

"Yeah," she says, and laughs, or cries, or— "That's what I thought."

"You have an entire human life here, Rose," he says, gently, and for that gentleness she hates him. "I only wanted to be part of it."

"But you're _not human!_" The words tear out of her. "You can't just play at it!"

"Rose, I'm not—I'm not _playing_. Is that what you think of me?"

Her cheeks, she realizes, are damp. "I don't know what to think anymore," she says, finally.

He looks at her, something ancient and aching behind his eyes; but when she gathers her keys and walks out the door, he makes no motion to stop her.

::

Her mum doesn't ask questions, just opens her door and gathers her close. "There, there, sweetheart," she says, "get it all out." When Rose finally calms down enough to speak, Jackie leads her to the kitchen, shoos the staff out, and sits a hot cuppa in front of her daughter. "Now, Rose, what's the matter?"

Rose hitches a breath. There's no best way to explain this, and nothing to be gained by stalling. "Mum," she starts, "do you know how the Doctor, this Doctor, is supposed to be human?"

"Of course," her mum says. "And the first one took off in his space box again."

"They switched places, Mum. I thought—I thought at first that he'd just lied about the human part, that there was some mistake, but he _switched places_ on me, he's been here all along."

"But Rose, sweetheart, isn't that a good thing?"

"I don't know!" She's surprised by the sudden vehemence that rushes through her. "He left me, Mum, he left me on that beach, and it _killed_ me. And then he let me think he'd left me again."

"Well, he's not helping matters by letting two of him run around." Jackie clucks. "Everything would be so much easier if he kept himself in one body, like a normal man."

"Mum."

"Oh, alright. Did you ask him why he did it?"

Rose slumps over her tea, sucking in the steam between her teeth. Maybe the free radicals will jumpstart her synapses. "He said it was partly to do with Donna, that if he'd gone back he'd have to erase her memories. I don't know why, maybe the other him can sort of—swap the human and Time Lord bits, or something."

"Is that all?"

"He said...he said that I had a human life here, and he wanted to be a part of it."

"Good on him," Jackie says, to Rose's clear shock. "What? Even he's got to get something right once in a decade."

"Guess so," Rose says, still reluctant to give the Doctor any quarter.

"Look, sweetheart." Her mum reaches across the table and wraps her hand around Rose's. "I saw you after we came back here. You were angry, and more hurt than I'd ever seen you, and you didn't know how to move on. You'd spent the entire time after Canary Wharf tryin' to get back to him, and when you finally did he left you back here with himself."

Jackie pauses and gives her a squeeze. "Now, you moved on, and you fell in love with the new one just as much, and sweetheart, you've been _happy_. But you never really stopped wondering about the other, did you?"

"No," Rose admits, and wipes her eyes with the back of her wrist.

"Well, there you go then." Her mum sits back with a satisfied look. "Seems to me you've got a second chance."

"Will we...Do you really think so?"

"Course I do. But that doesn't mean he shouldn't suffer for making you cry, Rose. If he shows his face round here—"

A sound cuts her off, a familiar sound, the sound of all of space and time coalescing into a single point.

"I'll smack him upside the head," Jackie finishes, and something large and red materializes in her kitchen.

"Thanks, Mum," Rose says, and Jackie must read the depth of Rose's gratitude, because she gives her daughter's hand a last squeeze before letting go.

"Anytime for you, sweets." A pause. "I'll just be in the parlor, but there's a cast iron skillet under the sink if you need it."

::

When the TARDIS door swings open, Rose is composedly sipping her tea. The Doctor emerges cautiously, first a hand and then his head, before stepping out; he's still disheveled and liberally streaked with grease, but he apparently takes the lack of tears as an invitation for levity. "Rose Tyler," he says, "rule number one is _no wandering off_."

She takes another sip of her tea. He wilts.

"Rose—"

"Let's go outside." She thumps her cup and saucer back on the table and leads the way to the back terrace. The staff has cleared all the walkways, but the snow stretches fresh and untouched over the lawn. It's nippy out, crisp but not uncomfortable, and Rose leans against the rail and fixes her eyes on the horizon so she doesn't have to look at the Doctor.

"Rose," he says, and hesitates. She wonders how many thoughts whirl through his mind in the span of that hesitation. "Do you know how many years the average person lives in this world?"

"Doctor—"

"Not a tangent, I promise. Do you?"

She tugs at her scarf. "I hadn't thought about it."

"One hundred forty," he says. "Maybe another decade, maybe one less. The health care here is remarkable, really."

"A hundred and forty's still nothing next to nine hundred," she points out.

"You've seen the time vortex. We can't be sure what that's done to you, but it's not the sort of thing that shortens a lifespan. And I'm already on my tenth regeneration, Rose, and I've burned through the last few at a rapid rate. In two centuries I might very well be dead."

"And that's supposed to make me feel _better_?"

She feels him shrug. "Well. I had hoped it might."

"No," she says, and shakes her head. "No, Doctor—it's never been about how long I'll live, because I'd rather have two years with you than two centuries without. It's about you lying to me, and you pretending to be something you're not, and you letting me think you'd left me on the beach again."

"Rose," he sighs. "I did think this was for the best."

"Because of Donna."

"Because of Donna, and because of _you_. Donna was safe, there was another Time Lord ready to step into the gap left by my absence, and we had the opportunity for a normal life."

"A normal life? A _normal_ life? Why bother to build the TARDIS, then, if we were supposed to have a perfect, _normal_ life?"

"I..."

"I'll tell you why, you stupid _man_." She turns to face him for the first time. "Because neither of us want to go to work everyday and have lawns and—and mortgages—and two and a half kids! If we weren't waiting for the TARDIS, we'd have taken off to Cairo, or Bangkok, or _Alaska!_"

His brow knits. "...Two and a half? Is that possible?"

"Oh, shut up," she says, but her lips quirk. "It wasn't ever about having any of those things, Doctor. It was about having _you_."

"Ah. Well."

"You can't make decisions for me."

"No matter how I try," he agrees.

"You should have told me."

"Yes."

"And now you're going to apologise."

"Absolutely," he says, and kisses her.

When they pull apart, he rests his forehead against hers and studies her from beneath heavy lids. "I have never," he says, quietly and distinctly, "in all my long years, met a being I less want to hurt than you, Rose Tyler. It seems my good intentions sometimes get the better of me. Fortunately, you persist in insisting on not being treated as anything other than my complete partner."

She sets her fingers against his face, and there's the brush of something warm and ephemeral against her mind. "Hear you've got a space ship," she says.

"Oh, yes." He smiles at her, that broad, wholly happy smile that he reserves entirely for her, and the universe slips neatly back into place. "But it isn't only a space ship."

"No?" she says.

"No," he answers, and takes her hand. "Did I mention that it travels in time?"


End file.
